DC Streetsblog

President Obama told reporters today that he’s committed to a six-year plan to rebuild 150,000 miles of roads, lay and maintain 4,000 miles of railways, restore 150 miles of runways, and create a national infrastructure bank.

On Labor Day, President Barack Obama gave a speech in which he pushed for the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank. Legislation that would establish the bank was introduced over the summer in Senate Bill 1926, authored by Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. But the idea of an independent financing entity for large infrastructure projects originated in Europe. The European Investment Bank (EIB) was created in 1958 as part of the Treaty of Rome, which started Europe on the path towards economic integration.

In Pittsburgh, elderly para-transit riders get automated phone calls with the precise arrival time of their vehicle. Bus priority lanes and preferential traffic signals in the Twin Cities are improving on-time service. Here in Washington, DC, stored value on SmartTrip cards pays for Metro parking, train and bus, and it can sync with pre-tax employee transit benefits. In San Francisco, dynamic pricing varies parking rates based on supply and demand, reducing traffic and helping people find available parking spaces.

Last week I mentioned I was about to take Amtrak from DC to New York. Well, it cost over $200 (and there was nothing particularly "high speed" about that rail experience).

It's November 3. The Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives.

The message today from two Republican-appointed former Secretaries of Transportation sounds a lot like the language you hear from reform groups advocating for an overhaul of federal transportation policy.

You may have noticed a new byline popping up on Streetsblog lately, and it's time to finally make it official: We're pleased to announce the arrival of Tanya Snyder as our new reporter tracking the national transportation policy beat.

We reported recently that the federal government was demanding $2.2 billion back from state DOTs in rescissions -- money that was already allocated to states that they were then asked to give back. Bike and pedestrian advocates were worried that states would disproportionately target active transportation projects for cuts, instead of carving into car-centric programs. They were right.

That’s the word from the DOT, which announced on Friday that it had received about $19 billion in applications for nearly 1,000 projects “from all 50 states, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.” The volume of applications, which range from “highways and bridges to transit and ports,” far exceeds the $600 million available in TIGER II funds.States competing for TIGER II money need to show that their transportation projects will have significant economic and environmental benefits at a city-wide, regional, or national level. Since the money is awarded at the discretion of DOT using set criteria, not disbursed through the rote formulas that govern most transportation funding, it’s been a catalyst for innovative transportation projects.